Alex Lo

My Take | Are US Fed economists Chinese propagandists too?

A foreign ministry document cataloguing American hegemonic abuses in the political, economic and military fields has been dismissed by top US envoy Nicholas Burns as propaganda, but a new US Fed paper makes exactly the same economic points

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Alex Lo

Published: 9:00pm, 6 Mar 2023

I felt like Nicholas Burns, the hardline US ambassador to China, the other day. While walking my dog, I forgot to bring along a poop bag, so I just let her do her business. A woman passer-by was outraged and rightly complained that I ought to have picked it up.

“What? She didn’t do anything,” I said, pretending to be innocent.

“I saw it,” she said and walked off, but not before giving me the evil eye.

What has this got to do with Burns? Well, after the Chinese foreign ministry published “US Hegemony and Its Perils” last month, a document that provides a long list of US sponsored coups, foreign invasions and subversions, war crimes and regime changes resulting in millions of refugees and civilian casualties across several continents, Burns dismissed it as propaganda.

“This is crude propaganda and unworthy of a great power,” Burns tweeted in response.

Really now, Mr Burns, it’s all a matter of record, both historical and current. A convenient place to start checking is the Military Intervention Project compiled by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a massive database that covers 1776 to 2019.